Come Home Again
by chezchuckles
Summary: Two part post-episode tag (sorta) for 8x03 PhDead. Castle starts investigating.
1. Chapter 1

**Come Home Again**

* * *

 **X**

 _Space._

There is nothing worse for them than space. Space is defined as a vacuum and history has spoken: they do not do well with time apart, adrift in the void.

Castle sighs and opens his eyes, once more presented with the view of the dull and weakly-lit ceiling of his bedroom. His, no longer theirs, but he adamantly refuses to think of it like that. The mattress is too soft; he can't sleep anyway. He sits up, puts his feet on the floor, stares ahead at nothing.

Each morning is the same. A handful of unconscious hours, waking long before his alarm, lying here convincing himself it can be different today. It will be different today. She'll come home again today.

As everyone keeps reminding him, he left her at the altar and for eight weeks went gallivanting off on some spy mission for the sake of national security. He doesn't remember doing it, he still thinks he'd never do something like that, and for the life of him, he can't figure out _why_.

Why would he ever leave her?

It's a pertinent question, since everyone keeps rubbing his nose in it, Kate included. _Dad, if you love her, you have to trust her; let her figure it out on her own, darling._ _You did it to her so the least you can do is give her space._

Okay. So _why_ did he do it to her? Because it might help him figure out why she's doing it to him.

Why did he do it?

Castle stands and leaves the empty, chilled bedroom, feet bare. Forgot his slippers. Forgot.

He found a way back to her, but it took eight weeks, it took eight weeks and dengue fever and a bullet he doesn't remember trying to dodge. It took eight weeks and some kind of procedure - some kind of last-ditch effort - to make him forget.

Forget what you've seen and heard or you don't go home again.

Kate won't come home either.

 _Is that it?_

He absently fills the coffee maker with water, his mind clicking over, sliding pieces together in the silence of the loft.

Kate doesn't forget. The things she's seen and heard, the injustices, the tragedies, they don't leave her. From the beginning, her passion for _people_ and her deep-seeded sense of right and wrong have inspired him to be a better man. To have a life of purpose. To take the important things seriously, to be part of something greater than just himself.

Kate would never choose to forget, not even to come home.

Not even to come home.

She would choose to fight. And while he's in misery over his own past choices, and the _why_ of leaving, he realizes something he never quite put together before.

He was gone for eight weeks, but that spy mission? It only took two. Two weeks, and what the hell was he doing for the other six? What was he doing but trying every last damn thing he could to get back to her. Six weeks scheming to get back.

The only way he would spend six weeks away from her, blowing up their perfect wedding day, their honeymoon, is if it wasn't safe.

It wasn't safe. He made _good-bye_ videos for his family because it was so dangerous that he didn't know if he'd make it. Whatever it was, it was a risk.

Six weeks. God. He can't drag on for six _weeks_ without her, in the dark, not knowing what she's doing that's so dangerous she'd rather rip out both their hearts.

She asked for space.

But he figures restraining order distance is good enough, right? If he can stay outside a hundred yard radius, but perhaps subtly keep tabs on her, to serve as back-up just in case - that's still space, right?

He won't lock her in a secret underground jail cell again. He'll just do a little investigating of his own.

 **X**

His investigation starts with making a how-to on his phone: _Beckett Come Home_.

It's not winning her back. It's become quite clear after the last case that there's nothing to win. It's all still there; she looks at his mouth and then drags her focus up to his eyes just as she always did. She shutters her face when she begins a conversation and then she can't anymore by the end of it, everything spilling out for him to see, just as it has been.

The spark, the connection - they've still got it.

 _Beckett Come Home_ is more about solving a case than it is about winning, but _what case_? That's the crux of things. He knows this started right after Allison Hyde shot herself, wrapping up the Bracken thing in a neat little bow, and while that's not really how he wanted to see it end-

What else is there?

After three nights of tracking her phone, he's discovered she's apparently sleeping in her office, because the little green locator dot doesn't move. He calls LT, whose chest is still black and blue from where his vest caught those rounds, and LT sneaks him up to Homicide around one in the morning, just to check on her.

She's not there. Oh, her _phone_ is there, sitting out on her desk, giving off it's happy locator signal for all to see. But Captain Beckett is not at the Twelfth.

Yeah, whatever this is - it's not safe.

He's about one hundred percent certain the way she's going about this isn't safe either. She needs to sleep, but he's not sure when she's actually doing that.

He thanks LT and pretends nothing is wrong, smiling for the guys on Charlie shift who are watching the soap opera of his life play out in these sad, pathetic moments. He goes home and stares at the map where it says his wife should be, only she isn't.

So the next day he begins tailing her.

He has to be careful, because if she's not taking her phone, then she's paying attention. But he wasn't a ride-along in the CIA for nothing, and he's learned some tricks. It comes back to him as he dodges Alexis's well-meaning phone calls and avoids the PI office. He leaves _his_ phone at home, even though he promised them both (his wife and his daughter) that he would never do that.

But Kate's doing it. And Kate's not being safe, is she?, so his conscience troubles him long enough to stop for a prepaid burner, slide that into his pocket, the feel of its unprotected slim shell so unnerving he's hyper-aware.

He doesn't follow her on the sidewalks, only on the road, driving rental cars or getting into taxis, depending on what he can manage. He catches her outside her gym most nights, Kate leaving the place with her hair wet and pulled back in a messy knot, and he knows there are no showers at that little boxing club she loves, so it's pure sweat and time. She's working herself to the bone, and he can see her wrists, he can see the protrusion of her clavicles above the collar of her shirt. Her cheekbones under the cave of her eyes.

On a Thursday, when the crisp scent of fall is in the air - dead things and smoke - he manages to follow her all the way to the end, to a storage lot near Battery Park. Metal sheds with corrugated lift doors, and she parks in shadows and slinks inside, her head down. He stays outside the fence and makes a note to come back alone.

She's there all night and comes out an hour before dawn, drives to a coffee place where he sees her with a laptop and free wifi, but her face so pinched and her eyes so hollow that it fists in his guts and makes him turn around, drive home.

He goes to bed and stays there all morning, sapped of strength, afraid for how little she's sleeping, afraid for what she's doing and how not safe it is, how not safe all of it is.

 **X**

Now that he has the location, he waits at the storage shed, taking mass transit so that he's not in an obvious vehicle, getting there ahead of her on foot while he knows she's at the boxing gym beating the shit out of the punching bag.

Sometimes he thinks he sees someone with her, and his heart burns in the cage of his ribs, and he goes home before it can char him, before it makes him hard and brittle, how she's doing this - whatever this is - without him.

Before he starts thinking about how she's doing this _with_ someone else.

When he makes surprise visits to the precinct, he brings muffin baskets and fruit bouquets, trying to entice her. He brings her coffee and leaves it beside her computer and disappears so she can drink it without feeling like she's crossing one of her invisible lines. On Fridays, he leaves a bear claw and then calls Ryan to see if she eats it.

She does.

She's been drinking his coffee too, and that's the good stuff from home, from _their_ home, and she has to know it is. She _has_ to know it's the Kona he bought for her to celebrate passing the captain's exam, no matter the take-away cups he puts it in.

He likes to think she knows he's haunting her, but maybe she's that focused, that dialed in, that she can't see him hovering, can't see him melting into the crowd or hiding in a cafe across the street or lurking in the shadows.

(If she doesn't see him, then who else is she not seeing? It's that thought which propels him out of bed those days he sees her with a shadowed form in the car, a man hidden in a storage shed, because if she doesn't see _him_ , then she's missing pieces, she's not as safe as she thinks, her back is exposed.)

He's working up the courage to approach her, but he wants to have all his facts straight. He wants to have the evidence in perfect order so she can't refute him. She needs him, even on this.

Whatever this is. He still has no idea, but she's spending her nights at a rented storage shed and doing research at the court of records on her lunch break, all the while training her body to the point of exhaustion.

He's paying attention, and he's trying, but she's very good at hiding her tracks. Whatever this is - he's clueless.

And then he sees who it is in her car, sitting in the passenger seat.

Vikram Singh.

Vikram Singh is playing the part of her plucky sidekick?

Then they're right back where they started, with an obsession she can't - or won't - kick.

 **X**

Castle is five minutes too late.

He knows she was leaving the Twelfth and going straight to the boxing gym, so he went into her office with Espo's help and searched through her drawers for _anything_ that might clue him in, and so he is too late when it starts.

He makes the mistake of assuming she went to the storage shed, but she didn't, and he has to go looking for her car, his long stride eating up the distance, his heart buzzing in his ears. As he scans the quiet blocks, he realizes this whole section of town is absolutely, held-breath silent.

It has never been silent.

Five minutes too late.

That's all it takes for not safe to blow up in her face.

When he approaches the FDR and spots the docks and their cramped, hulking equipment, the sound of the river and the barges like groans, it's already going down. It's already going down and he walks into it and can't understand what he hears, what he's seeing.

He doesn't see her at first.

And then he does, and it's already too late.

Gunfire erupts from overhead, sniper shots, and he sees - middle of the street - he sees her go down.

Castle dives, getting low and creeping forward until he's on the opposite sidewalk, not willing to risk sticking his head up. From the minimal cover of a stout blue mailbox, he waits for breath and pause, steeling himself to dash forward.

Another volley of shots and he grunts with the effort of holding back, not being stupid, but Kate is out there defenseless, down, no one to cover her back. A set of footsteps on pavement, but heading the opposite direction, and he hears four more shots aimed after that retreat, as if from the side of the building.

He risks it then, but he can't see her at this angle. He rises to a crouch and runs the length of the sidewalk, heading for the spot where he saw her go down, using that pause between heartbeats or reloading or change in positions to make his way towards her.

Another sniper shot pings the edge of a truck parked in front of him and he dives to the wheel well, hunched over the tire. They've seen him, whoever they are, they know he's here; they're back on this side of the building. He gets a grip on his yammering heart and wipes sweat out of his eye, wishing he'd been in that damn boxing ring with her the last few weeks.

"Kate," he calls softly, rising only a millimeter and sighting the top window. He sees a form, but surely at this distance and darkness he's seeing things, wishes he had a weapon to return fire.

Or that might triangulate his position. Maybe it's better he doesn't, just like he told Alexis.

Movement. A shadow. Is it heading away?

Damn. "Beckett," he rasps, inching forward to the front tire of the truck.

His hands are slick with sweat, he can't hear anything at all but the echoes of gunshots.

" _Kate._ "

And then he does hear something. Something. The sniper shots have stopped, but he can't be sure they're not just waiting for him.

He has to. He won't leave her dying in the damn street. But running out there would only get them both in trouble. He needs to _see,_ needs eyes on the street, he has to-

The truck.

Castle drops to the scant space between the curb and the truck, lowers his head to the ground until he has a clear view in the darkness. For a moment, all he sees is pavement and broken glass, but after a heart-thudding confusion, he realizes.

"Kate," he breathes.

She's lying on her back, just on the other side of the truck. Her head is turned his way, but her eyes are closed. Blood, lots of blood. Dark stain at her thigh.

"Beckett," he calls out, dropping lower and squirming under the truck. "Kate."

It's a tight fit, even with the truck's relative height off the street, but he squirms towards her, scraping his face against the edges of a pothole, loose gravel abrading his skin. A sharper pain somewhere in his shoulder that he ignores. Blood circling her eye socket, matting her hair, soaking her ear.

"Kate, I'm coming. Just hang on, hang on, honey."

He reaches the other side of the truck, checks his first instinct to grab her. He can't let them know he's here, can't draw attention, afraid they'll shoot at Kate from their elevated position, shoot at any movement. With her head - wound - they might think they've already got her.

"Beckett," he hisses. It's dark on the street, the lights have been shot out. If they have night vision, this is all over.

If they had night vision, she'd be dead.

She might be dead already.

No. No, she's not dead.

"Kate," he calls softly, easing his arm out, fingers reaching for her. His heart is beating in his throat, but he keeps his arm steady, no sudden movement, and he touches the sleeve of her coat. He takes a grateful breath, gets a fistful of the wool, and begins to pull.

Kate groans and her eyes flicker open. Staring at him. Blood rimming her eye.

"Kate."

"No," she groans.

"Kate, honey, get under the truck. Come on. Help me, you gotta help me. Roll under the truck."

He's still pulling at her coat, trying the best he can to forcibly drag her under what protection the truck affords. She's not moving. He can't turn on his side to get his other arm around; there's no room.

"Kate, they're _shooting_ at us. Get under the damn truck."

Her eyes flutter, her hand comes up-

A shot pings the metal and he ducks, instinctively, but adrenaline has him jerking harder on her coat and dragging her partway. The shot seems to have woken her instincts for self-preservation, because Kate starts trying, her hand fumbling at his arm, her injured leg limp as she shifts with the other.

Even though he has absolutely no leverage lying on his stomach, he gets her close enough to reach out with both hands and pulls with all his might, dragging her into him under the truck.

She cries out, arching, but he runs a hand down her side, feels the blood at her thigh, cups behind her knee to drag her legs under the truck with him. He's breathing fast in her face, his body half over hers, and her eyes flare open.

And then slam shut.

Blood runs down her face. His elbow grinds into the pavement as he touches her forehead, blood and grit and - and bone. Kate gasps, eyes startling open again.

"Castle," she moans. Tears in her eyes.

"It's okay, it's okay," he promises. It's not okay. It's very not okay. He digs into his back pocket and rips out the new phone, thumb smearing blood across the face. Clumsy, but he calls Esposito. "It's gonna be fine, just hang on, Kate. Just-"

"How'd you get this num-"

"Espo, it's me. Kate's been shot. I think Vikram was here too, but I can't find him. Kate's been shot - tw-twice. We need a bus, Espo-"

"Wait, wait, Castle? Where _are_ you?"

"FDR Drive and Fletcher, east of Battery Park. Just before the docks-" Already he can hear Esposito yelling to someone, he must be in the precinct, rounding up the cavalry. "We need back-up, Espo; there's a sniper, building facing the water. It was a sniper; they were waiting for her. I don't know how many shooters."

"No," Kate groans, and her fingers fumble at his face, a slick of blood on his bottom lip. "Not you."

"Hush, Kate," he murmurs, touching her temple and trying not to lose it. His voice cracks. "It's okay. Help's on the way. Just stay with me."

"Castle? Castle, are you there-"

"I'm here. We're both here. Someone shot at Kate; we need an ambulance."

"Castle, we have cars on the way. Where are you, tell me where you are-"

"Under a truck, black truck parked on the street. I don't know if they're gone. They shot at Kate-"

"Castle, have you been shot?"

Has he what?

"Castle, you hear me, man? Don't hang up. You do not need to go into shock."

Shock. He stares down at Kate, watching her eyes roll back, her lids closing.

"Kate," he calls. "Kate, stay with me."

Esposito is yelling at him on the phone.

Her eyes startle, her lips parting. He presses his free hand to her thigh and she moans; he can feel the give of ragged flesh, the blood soaking her pants. She lets out a long breath that sounds like settling, like giving up, and he presses his palm a little harder into the wound.

Kate gasps, throat working, and her eyes catch his. "Lo-love you."

"Don't do that," he growls. He feels light-headed. "Don't say good-bye."

"Al-ways, always love you."

"Don't you dare."

Her eyes sink close and no matter how tightly he staunches her wound, he can't get her to wake up.

 **X**


	2. Chapter 2

**Come Home Again**

* * *

 **X**

The sling itches.

He can't use his phone to pass the time. He has the burner, but he can't download his profile or his apps. He could create a new apple ID and buy the same shit all over again, but then he's got to connect it to a credit card, and then that's a dead giveaway.

He's trying.

He's at least thinking it through, working at the problem from a new angle every night when it gets like this.

He can't sleep.

The sling itches and there's something about the view of the next building from this tiny window that makes him nervous. He asked for binoculars but the boys won't bring them. He asked for magazines and was collected 'Field & Stream' and 'AARP' from the family room two halls over.

She's mostly sleeping off PT or pain pills these days. They have a mini-fridge filled with chocolate kisses and Tropicana orange juice, and their door stays closed no matter the time of day.

One bedroom, industrial-grade fluorescents overhead, and a television big enough for a geriatric Korean War vet to see from the cream-colored couch. A Korean War vet who died three months ago, giving Castle and Kate a convenient hiding place in the heart of the city - Brookdale Assisted Living. They're blocks from Battery Park and the place where Kate was shot.

A 93 year old man down the hall keeps shuffling to their door and knocking, calling loudly for Barry to come to dinner in the cafeteria; he's going to miss the Mississippi mud cake for dessert. At four thirty in the afternoon. Kate wakes every time, usually violently, so that Castle has taken to sleeping on the couch when the urge for a nap brings him down like a tranq dart.

The sling itches. Chafes his neck, material rubs his forearm too.

He's not on the couch. Not tonight. He tries to be close just in case, because when she can't find him, it's worse.

He tempts fate and takes the sling off, risking her ire if she wake and finds him bucking the PT's rules. He keeps his arm drawn up to his chest and rolls to his other shoulder, watching her sleep in the close quarters of Barry's bed.

Poor Barry. Poor 93 year old man down the hall who's lonely for his friend.

Poor Castle, who can't quite make his wife understand that this is where he wants to be. Here. In a too-small bed with the moonlight across her face and their future uncertain, up-ended, halted. He ran away with her once before, her blood smeared down a motel hallway, and when she regained consciousness, she directed them right back. So this time he set up their safe house inside the city, knowing she wanted to be here, take them all on, continue running point on the investigation.

When she can, anyway, when she's not laid low by headaches or PT or the pain pills.

Alexis and his mother decamped at Thanksgiving, heading for Paris and then Prague after that where a house was made available. He's pretty sure it's from his no-good father, but he'll take what he can get. Alexis was forced to drop two classes, took an incomplete in Psychology, and is doing the other two online.

He's not happy with that, Kate's seriously not happy with it, but Alexis tells him she'd rather be a PI anyway, and who needs college for that? He thinks she's joking. He's not entirely sure. Christmas is a week away and for the first time since he can remember, he's not sure his daughter will be with him for the holiday.

"Stop staring at me while I sleep," she mumbles.

"You're crying again," he whispers back. Reaches out and smooths his thumb at her cheek and down to her ear where the tears have tracked.

"Just the stupid pain pills."

"I know."

"And life," she sighs, turning her head slowly to look at him. The pale skin of her scalp is still so bright in the moonlight - where they shaved her head to stitch the ragged gap of the bullet's trajectory. It will scar, they said, despite the plastic surgeons, two of them, who consulted. It will scar right along the natural part of her hair, which is lucky - that's the word the surgeons used. _She's lucky._

She is lucky.

"Life," he says, quirking his lips at her.

"I wanted a baby with you," she says suddenly, her mouth twisting and her hand coming up to cover her eyes.

Castle lifts onto an elbow and carefully kisses the crook of her arm. He tries very hard not to laugh. "That's not off the table, honey."

"How can we have kids in the middle of all of this?"

"Just because you're sidelined doesn't mean this won't be resolved some day. Some day soon, Kate. With the help we have-"

"Your dad and step-mother," she mutters, but she drops her hand. "I don't know that AG's office is going to be able to find him either."

"He can't have gone far." He runs two fingers over the short hairs at her forehead. She looks like a punk rocker; chose not to shave her whole head but to leave her hair long on one side and buzzed on the other, and it is _wrong_ how it turns him on.

Is it wrong? His wife is amazing, and he's furious with her half the time and desperately in love with her the rest. Even furious, he's in love with her.

He's definitely furious.

She growls and slaps his hand away. "This is not how I investigate a case." She gestures to the room with a hand and he knows it hurts her, everything hurts her. "Hiding out in an old folks' home."

"No, how you investigate a case is by keeping everyone you love in the dark and getting yourself shot."

She huffs. "Not - at first. I was doing alright. I was doing it right."

"Getting yourself shot. In the head. Alone."

"I had Vikram-"

"Vikram who played you."

She closes her mouth, crying again, and he doesn't feel bad one bit. Let her cry. If she stops and thinks about it next time, then let her cry. He _won't_ feel bad about it.

"You took Vikram because he was safe to lose. I get it. I understand your priorities. I just don't like your methods."

"We're never going to agree on that. You're not a cop, no matter how much you play at one."

"So sign me up."

"Yeah?" she garbles, angry but still - tears rolling down her face. "You want to get some actual training? That might be a good idea considering."

"If I have Academy training, does that make me magically worthy again? Or will you hide other things from me because it's above my pay grade?"

She just cries. Mouth closed, lips pressed furiously together, crying when she hates to cry, when it makes her feel like shit, crying because of some damn pain pills she has to have because her headaches actually bring her to her knees.

Headaches from a bullet wound.

"You did this without me, Kate," he growls, stomach rolling as she cries. "You and me. And you broke it."

"To keep this from happening," she gets out, choked up as she tries to talk around the tears. "To keep us safe. You and me. Need you alive for us."

"Us. _Us_ did this before, if you remember, and quite successfully. You and me. Together. We got Bracken, didn't we?"

"But this is so much bigger. This nearly had us running - your step-mother wanted us to disappear. That was the _solution._ I couldn't do it. I couldn't just never see you again, tell you nothing - you did that to me and I wasn't going to do it to you-"

"So you left me anyway? Telling me to my face half-truths was better?" He growls and scrapes a hand down his face. He's said all this. All has already been said.

"My entire team from the AG's office, Castle. Killed because I put in a query. Because I had to get it done. My fault."

"Not your fault; you didn't pull the trigger. Your responsibility, okay, yes. I get that. I do. But when you take this on alone, Kate, you have the tendency to forget that people love you, that they _hurt_ -"

"I was careful," she cries. "I did everything like we did. All those precautions you put up last time, all the checks and - everything." She's crying hard, now, and his chest feels like every breath is through knives, and he knows the more she cries the worse her head feels, but-

"But you didn't do it with me. All those precautions mean nothing without someone to hold you accountable."

"I'm not a child."

"No," he mourns. If she were, she wouldn't have been shot. If he could scold her and send her to her room, coal in her stocking-

"This is my life. This is who I am-"

"It's who I _love_. And I want to _keep_ \- God, I want to keep you _here_ for things like kids and the whole rest of our lives. That's all. I'm not saying no. I'm saying do it smarter."

"I was trying to," she fights back. "I was doing everything we always did. But just - you got shot following me anyway. I didn't want you following me."

"Following you or getting shot?" She closes her eyes against him. "Stop equating the two. They don't equate. You ever think I didn't want you getting shot, either? That's why all this. That's why we investigate from the old folks' home." He reaches out again and brushes at the tear track, sticks his wet finger in her ear to make her laugh. She grunts and swipes at him again, and he curls in closer even though the room is stuffy.

"My head is killing me," she whispers.

"Need a pillow?"

"Please." Small and broken, her voice in the dark. He carefully slides his arm under her neck, so careful, so careful, and then arranges her against his side. The extra support tilts her head and eases the throbbing of her sinuses after the tears. That he knows this makes his heart hurt.

"How's that?" he whispers.

"Better," she sighs. "Tired. Better in the morning."

"Yeah," he promises softly. "Until tomorrow, Kate."

She makes a sad noise in her throat, because they both know tomorrow won't be better. It will only be another day of this, migraines that have her vomiting and bedridden, physical therapy for her leg after two infections in the muscle that tore, a recovery so obstacle-ridden and daunting that only Kate Beckett could come back from it.

"At least you can write," she murmurs against his shirt. "At least I didn't hurt you."

"You did hurt me," he sighs. "Every day I woke up alone. I'd write one-handed if I had to. Lose the whole damn arm. Can't lose you. Can't lose you, Kate. Wish you'd believe that."

She struggles back again. "You're not willing to see me hurt and I'm not willing to see you hurt either, Castle. That's what this is, love, and it's stupid and unfair and it hurts."

"You couldn't be more wrong."

"Oh, yeah?" she says bitterly. Her cheek is mashed against his arm. Her voice is nearly a whine and he knows her head is killing her, and that fighting with him makes it worse, but just that she's _here_ to fight. "How am I wrong? Look where we are. What we did. Are doing."

"Fighting."

"About the same things," she mutters. "About not wanting the other person hurt. It's dumb. It makes us weak."

"It makes us strong."

She doesn't answer. Of course not. She has no answer, not the woman lying on his arm even though it will go numb in a few minutes just because it makes her head feel slightly better. She can't answer to that love because she's in it right now.

She is his achilles heel and he is hers, but they are so strong, so much stronger together.

"I just wanted to do this and come home again."

"This isn't home?" he says, flippant.

"Home is the loft. You know what I meant. Get it done, over, and be - home. For good."

"Home is where the heart is. You're here." He resists the urge to touch her. "I'm feeling at home."

"Lame," she mutters, but her lashes blink in the moonlight. Of course, they don't talk about Alexis and Martha; neither of them bring it up.

But he thinks the tears have stopped. Can't help watching her. All those nights she wasn't beside him to watch, and yeah. Here's home.

"I'm so tired," she whispers. Her eyes close. "But my head hurts."

He lifts his free hand and very lightly skims two fingers down the side of her face, back along the fuzzy part, reading the bumps in her skull - and the scar. She's trying not to cry again. Blinking fast.

"Will you read to me?" she whispers.

"Which one tonight? Harry Potter or-"

"Nikki," she sighs, melancholy in the name.

He shifts as incrementally and as slowly as he can, fumbles at the bedside table for his kindle. He powers it on and props it on his chest, angling the screen away from her face so the light doesn't catch her eyes. She has them closed but it would hurt her anyway.

Migraines are worse after a sleepless night, so he hopes this does the trick.

He resumes from where they left off, at the digital bookmark, and he begins to read.

" _Discord has a sound: a tense whispering. Captain Heat could hear it the moment she stepped into the Homicide Squad Room back at her precinct..._ "

He's drone for a few pages when Kate rouses, as if she was halfway under his spell and something kissed her awake. "She's a bitch, isn't she?" Kate murmurs. Her arm is slung low at his waist and he's using it to prop up the kindle. "Nikki is a bitch."

"Rook is an asshole," he offers.

"Do we do that?"

"Only sometimes," he promises.

"I don't want to do that to you."

"It's a caricature, Kate. It's what makes them likable and root-for-able. I don't think that's really a word, but you know what I mean."

"You're an author - a best-selling and famous author. I think you get to make them up now," she whines. Her headache makes her earnest in her misery. "Don't you have a license for that?"

He chuckles, liking her again. Always love her, hard to like right now. "Sure. You're exactly right."

"He's not always an asshole," she whispers.

"She's not always a bitch. She's strong. And she knows right from wrong, and sometimes he needs a little push to be reminded that the right _matters_ \- no matter what world he's from."

"I think you're talking about you and me now," she mumbles. She sounds hazy. "I wasn't talking about you and me."

"Yeah, you were," he says quietly, reaching up to stroke at her scalp once more. She hates it when he touches it so much, but the sensation of those short, soft hairs and the scar, the knobby bumps of her skull - alive. She's alive. "You were, and I love you, Kate, even when it hurts and it's stupid and unfair. Even if we go places far from home."

"I love you too," she sighs, and he feels her fade into sleep.

 **X**

He's midway through his afternoon nap when the rap comes on the front door leading to the communal hallway. It takes him some time to orient, the tenor and pace of the old folks' home has leached into him, and he struggles with the sling around his neck as he makes his way to the door.

He can see Kate sitting at the chess table that passes for a kitchen table and office desk. She's slumped against the wall, out like a light. Again. The case information is spread before her, cramped by the lack of space.

He makes a little noise as he goes, for whomever is behind the knock, but also for Kate, to wake her without drawing attention to the fact that he saw her passed out over the case again. Trying to get them back home.

He opens the door and can't fathom their visitor.

"Uncle Barry!" Arms are thrown around his neck, and a squalling upset baby girl who is almost two pitches forward into his chest. "Oh, sorry, sorry, Sarah Grace, sweetie, don't strangle him. He's only got one arm."

"He can manage with one, or so he tells me," Kate says from behind him. She's struggled up to stand in the half-kitchen, leaning heavily on her cane, but smiling for Jenny Ryan. "Come on in. Quickly." That last word is said to him, and he nods, holding Sarah Grace against his chest with one arm and nudging the door shut with his injured elbow in its sling. Bullet only grazed him; the sling is really to keep the joint immobile, not to keep him from using his arm.

Which itches like crazy in the damn sling, but it's hard to be conscious of that when his arms are filled with a twenty-three month old who thinks he's big and adorable like a teddy bear.

"Hey, Sarah Grace," he whispers, nuzzling her nose with his. She giggles and claps her hands to his face, eyes squinting and blonde hair bobbing in her pig tails. Little curls at the end, bright purple bows. She squeals her hello even as Jenny is hovering at Kate's side - Jenny who's four months pregnant and showing just enough to glow.

Kate has this far away look in her eyes, lips pressed together.

He gets a little fist in his nose and catches her arm. "Hey, now, no clobbering your Uncle Rick. How are you doing, pipsqueak?"

Sarah Grace gives him her best smile, beaming and wriggling as he heads for Kate's side.

"Not that we don't love it," Kate is saying as she attempts to ease gracefully into the worn brown recliner. "But what are you doing here?"

"Visiting our uncle Barry. Right, Uncle Barry?"

"Uncle Barry!" Sarah Grace says, hamming it up with her big grin and dimples. "Hi, hi!"

"She's devastating," Rick sighs, coming forward just in time to catch Kate's elbow. It means carrying Sarah Grace with his injured arm, but it beats watching his wife struggle and hem and haw trying to figure out how to sit."You do know you're adorable, Sarah Grace, don't you?"

She throws up both arms. "I do!" And they all chuckle at her antics, the things she repeats at the best - and worst - times.

Castle ignores the look Kate shoots him and sits down on the couch beside Jenny. "All kidding aside. This is a little dangerous, Jenny."

"Kevin called me, asked me to make my way here during my errands. You do know that Uncle Barry is real, right?"

Horror trickles through him. "He's - was your uncle?"

She waves a hand. "Somewhere in there. Big Catholic family. Everyone's our uncle. In fact, I have two cousins and a great aunt in here too, and we'll make our rounds. Sarah Grace is always a hit."

"Oh my God," Kate murmurs, her eyes catching his.

He didn't quite know that part of things. Looks like the boys kept _them_ in the dark just as Kate did. Runs in her precinct family.

"Kevin says to tell you they've found Vikram. And, oh!" Jenny leans forward, oblivious to their stunned disbelief, lifts two canvas shopping bags. "And I brought you these. Groceries and some things Kate put on a list."

Kate takes the bags hurriedly, her face an interesting mix of things he can't decipher but for the pain. Her head hurts from looking over the case - and that's easy to see.

"Back to Vikram," Castle interrupts. "Where did they-?"

"Oh, I mean, he's dead. Did I not say that? They found his body."

"Dead?" Sarah Grace parrots.

"That's right, sweetie," Jenny coos. Completely unconcerned about her almost-two year repeating morbid words. "Good job. Dead. Vikram, that's his name, right? Kevin wouldn't let me write it down. But they're working on it, he says, and to tell you so you'd know it's almost over."

Almost over.

Just like that. Kate, who doesn't want to be convinced Vikram was behind it all along, shifts in her chair and says his name.

"Yeah," he says back quietly. But answering what?

Vikram is dead. The boys are on it. And they're both stuck here with questions no one can answer.

 **X**

He has a physical therapy appointment he wants to cut, but Kate has fallen asleep again and his shoulder is stiff. Jenny and her energy are long gone, and only questions remain. It doesn't feel like it's over, and if he skips PT, so will Kate. So he spends an hour grunting through exercises the staff PT gives him, and then he lies on the padded table, dozing through the ultrasound.

He wakes alone, the room empty, the steep slant of afternoon light hinting that it's Uncle Barry's dinner time. His own stomach growls, and he wonders if there were steaks in those groceries Jenny Ryan brought with her this morning.

Probably not. And how would he cook them? They have a hot plate and a mini-fridge.

No, it'll be dinner from the cafeteria again. Mushy salisbury steak and mashed potatoes.

Castle finally sits up, swaying a little as the blood rushes out of his head. He slides his feet to the linoleum floor and stands, stretching as best he can with his weary arms. His shoulder already feels better than it did this morning.

He shambles out of the room and down the corridor, bypassing the commons with its HD television and the lobby filled with wheelchair-bound elderly folks. He wonders if he and Kate will make it to a place like this some day, or if he'll spend his nineties alone, still here, getting up to his usual antics but breaking his hip in the process.

And where is Kate in that picture? Shot dead somewhere. Retired from the NYPD. Or back in some other room, napping.

Well, today, she's in their room, and he shuffles to their door, using the key to unlock it. His head is down to watch his steps, feeling older than he meant to let himself today, trying to be sure that this isn't the day he breaks that hip, and at first the darkness doesn't catch his attention.

And then it does.

His head comes up, and his vision is filled with little twinkling lights, white lights, tiny lights strung across the false mantle and along the back of the couch. Four tiny green-knit stockings. The chess table is cleared of papers and on top stands a little evergreen tree, winking with lights. A real tree.

It smells like cinnamon and pine and Kate, and she's leaning against the bedroom door, waiting on him, her heart in her eyes.

"Kate," he husks.

"Hi," she says. Her hands flutter. "You said it was home. But it's Christmas, and you never..."

His heart is fluttering.

She shifts and he sees she's left the cane behind somewhere. Her hands clench in fists, but she keeps coming for him. The door swings shut behind him and the lights, the bare little tree, the smell of Christmas-

"Now you're crying," she whispers, stepping into him.

His arms go around her automatically, his eyes filled with the soft magic in the room.

"Now we're home," he admits, head bobbing.

She turns and kisses his neck, and then sighs and lays her head against his shoulder, letting him take the weight she can't carry.

Finally home.

 **X**


End file.
